They will proclaim the 2nd Amendment is an individual right, yet it still can be infringed when it is in the state's interest and all laws violating this individual right will still be enforced??????
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[url]dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010711/ts/crime_guns_dc_1.html[/url]
Wednesday July 11 2:01 PM ET
Justice Department Reverses Gun Rights
Position
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Reversing a position it adopted nearly 30
years ago, the Justice Department (news - web sites) is preparing a
formal legal opinion that individuals, not just groups, have a
constitutional right to own guns, a view advocated by Attorney General
John Ashcroft (news - web sites), department officials said on
Wednesday.
They said the department's office of legal counsel was drafting the
opinion, which would be a shift from the position it took in 1973 under
Republican President Richard Nixon that there was no personal
constitutional right to own or use a gun.
The letter, denounced by gun-control groups, represented a break from
the government's prior position that the Second Amendment only
conferred a collective right to own guns through militias, and not an
individual right.
The opinion will incorporate the views Ashcroft first expressed in a letter
to the National Rifle Association in May. The officials said Ashcroft, an
NRA member, expressed official Justice Department policy in the letter,
not his personal views.
In another move applauded by the NRA, Ashcroft last month
announced plans to slash the amount of time the government can keep
records of instant background checks for gun buyers.
[b]One official said the Justice Department would continue to defend
existing gun laws in court, even after the opinion had been completed.
In his letter, Ashcroft said the Second Amendment did not prohibit
Congress from enacting laws restricting firearms ownership for
``compelling state interests.''[/b]

(continued)
The issue of whether the Second Amendment applies to individuals is
before a federal appeals court based in New Orleans, and the case
could then be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites).
The Second Amendment says, ``A well-regulated militia, being
necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep
and bear arms shall not be infringed.''
Seth Waxman, solicitor general under Democratic President Bill Clinton,
said in a letter nearly a year ago that successive Democratic and
Republican administrations, the Supreme Court in 1939 and eight U.S.
appeals courts had rejected arguments the Second Amendment
extended firearms rights to individuals.

infringe: to break in; encroach or trespass (in or upon the rights, patents,etc. of others)
Syn.-violate, transgress, encroach, infract, intrude, invade, trespass.
What part of [b]"...shall ot be infringed'[/b] don't you understand?
[img]http://www.ncsg.org/topohat-small.jpg[/img]